Part edgy memoir, part
social criticism, part spiritual writing, The Way Out is
Christopher
Nutter’s account of his journey from closeted, nerdy Alabamian to hot
and sexy New York gay bartender and party boy, to jaded and unhappy
victim of gay club culture glitz, to spiritual seeker and exponent of
gay wisdom.

There are not a lot
of details of Nutter’s autobiography in the book; the book isn’t about
him. But his personal story provides the framework within which to
share the insights he has gained over his twelve years as an explorer
of urban gay life. There’s just enough personal anecdote, from his own
life and from that of friends he cites, to keep the wisdom grounded,
and the insights identifiable and personal.

Chris Nutter grew up
in straight middle-America, in his case in Birmingham, Alabama, in the
70s and 80s. As a child, he was depressed and withdrawn, he tells,
because he didn’t feel attractive enough or masculine and
self-confident. Once he got to college, he began to remedy his sense of
physical and personal inadequacy by going to the gym, changing his
look, and acting the role of privileged pretty boy. But he was still in
denial of his sexual feelings. So it was a monumental shift in his life
when in 1993 he decided to take control of his own destiny. He dropped
his plans for law school to do what he wanted to do, which was to be a
writer, came out gay, took a magazine internship job in Boston, and,
most significantly, initiated his new identity by writing an article
for Details magazine about life in the closet. He burst out of his own
closet on a national scale. And was met with almost universal
acceptance.

As he tentatively
explored the gay sub-cultural world of the big cities, he discovered
gay club culture: “gorgeous, glamorous gay men with hot bodies.”
He threw himself into that world. He scored a job as a bartender at a
famous gay bar, wrote for a gay magazine, posed for classy homoerotic
photography. So by the standards of that glitz gay club culture, he’d
made it. He was one of those men with the hot bodies. He could do
attitude and fuck like it was an athletic sport. But he still wasn’t
happy.

He observes that
“coming out of the closet is usually thought of as the singular answer
to the gay ‘predicament.’” But then the gay world just takes over your
mind and fills your head with yet another false reality about who you
are. It’s a solution, but only part of the whole solution, a step in
the right direction, but only a step. There remains the deeper question
of who you really are. And this is a spiritual question.

Intermixing themes in
current spiritual thought--the Dalai Lama, Joseph Campbell, Don Miguel
Ruiz, Gary Zukav, A Course in Miracles, the Twelve Steps-Nutter offers
an answer to who you really are. And in the process recounts how he
came to understand this through his experience in urban gay culture.
The answer, of course, isn’t new or surprising. It’s the age-old
answer: we are each a perspective that “God” or “Divine Consciousness”
or “the cosmos”--whatever you want to call IT--is taking on itself. We
are not separate beings, competing and fighting with one another. We
are each other and so it’s ok to tell the truth, it’s ok to let go of
fear, it’s ok to love and respect other human beings as expressions of
the divine consciousness.

Nutter identifies
five steps in changing one’s life: Decide to Heal; Recognize Your Pain
as Your Pain; Look For How You Cover Up or Avoid Your Pain; Refrain
From Reacting, Feel Your Pain and Learn What Is Causing It; and Correct
Your Vision. These describe the dynamics of psychotherapy and
consciousness-raising, but presented in identifiable terms, based in
modern day experience. They also echo the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths.

Chris Nutter’s
articulation of this wisdom is fresh and current. He speaks with the
voice of his generation and in a way that makes this revolutionary
mystical wisdom seem obvious and inevitable—even though it is
life-altering. And he derives his wisdom from his gay experience not in
repudiation or rejection of it.

Nutter is a little
judgmental about that glitzy gay club culture. There certainly is
justification for this. The club culture/ gay bar culture/sexual
underworld can be alluring, then addicting, then destructive. Some
men’s lives are ruined by drugs and alcohol and compulsive sex. Some
men need “the way out” from the gay world, just as they had earlier
needed “the way out” of the closet. For most gay men, I think, this
comes about as simply the natural development of growing older and
changing priorities. But even for those who are just naturally growing
up, a book like this can be immensely helpful. We all go through those
five steps whether we know it or not. It helps to know it and to have
some guidance in understanding where the process is going.

It’s refreshing to
discover a book like this coming from the youth generation of today.
It’s one thing when these ideas about mature gay consciousness come
from psychiatrists and professional spiritual writers. It’s quite
another--much more immediately accessible and believable--when it comes
from one of those gorgeous, hot bartenders.

Interesting, by the
way, Nutter doesn’t use the word queer. There’s a welcome
naiveté about the politicized terminology of the gay movement;
this gives the book a feel of personal honesty and
straightforwardness and makes it speak its wisdom that much more
effectively.

It is exciting--and
concerning--that Chris Nutter has derived this wisdom and spiritual
worldview on his own. It confirms the intuition that gay men are
talented at designing worldviews and religions (as we are with flowers
and furniture). This is the personal yoga of every one of us today: to
create our own religion. What’s concerning is that he had to do it
without the help of the generations of other gay spiritual seekers
who’ve done it before him because their wisdom just isn’t readily
available to the mainstream--and especially the gay club--culture. Our
gay history keeps getting lost.

It’s a symptom of
collective homophobia--and how it gets expressed in mainstream gay
culture--that young homosexuals seeking to overcome personal homophobia
naturally resist instruction from older homosexuals out of the very
homophobia they’re trying to overcome. This dynamic is familiar as the
notion that homosexuals can’t be trusted to be accurate reporters on
homosexuality because we’d be biased! As though personal experience and
knowing whereof one speaks is a “bias.” Exacerbating the problem of
passing gay wisdom down from one generation to another is that the very
experience of realizing and accepting one’s own homosexuality
usually is concomitant with realizing you can only trust your own
counsel, everything you’ve been told about sexuality is wrong and you
have to discover the secret truth yourself--in Buddhist terms, you’re
on your own and nobody’s going to save you. So each generation of
homosexuals begins by rejecting the past and distrusting all
passed-down wisdom, whether it’s from their parents, their church and
government or from gay community elders. (This manifests, of course, as
the continual evolving of the “politically correct” name for the
movement; every generation rejects the previous generation.)

So in a way I have to
think I’m sorry Chris Nutter had to go without the accumulated wisdom
of the gay elders. Our community somehow needs to learn its historical
continuity and “apostolic” succession and make this consciousness
accessible to youth just joining us. But I am also quite proud of him
for having made the perilous journey. I expect him to take his place
among the new generation of gay leaders and luminaries.

The Way Out is a
good
book. It’s easy to read, interesting and thought-provoking. Nutter’s
presentation of the perennial wisdom is fresh and accessible.

Toby Johnson, PhDis
author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of
his
teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and
religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual
issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's
spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor
of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.

Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.

FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.